Apple may have rolled its eyes over the perceived durability of the foldable displays that Samsung provided it for testing. On the runup to its first device with a foldable screen that will reportedly replace the iPad mini, Apple allegedly tested a number of pliable panels and came away unimpressed by Samsung’s display that broke after a few days of testing.
If true, this might delay the launch of the foldable iPad mini-sized gear until Apple waits on the next generation of such panels, but now Samsung is determined to prove how touch the current crop actually is.
Samsung foldable display first to get military-grade certificate
Samsung Display just announced that its 7-inch foldable screen installed in phones like the Galaxy Z Fold 5 has become the first such screen to pass the U.S. Department of Defense recognized military standard MIL-STD 810G tests.
The so-called American Military Specification (MilSpec) testing places the devices it has to evaluate in extreme temperature conditions or subjects them to rough usage aimed to simulate the daily wear and tear they’d undergo if provided for military service.
In the test, the foldable panel operated normally even after the exterior of the panel was frozen into 6mm-thick ice by spraying water in an environment of minus 10 degrees, and that state was maintained for 4 hours. There were no performance problems in a test in which the device endured an environment of -32 degrees Celsius and +63 degrees Celsius for two hours in a row, and repeated such sudden temperature changes three times over 12 hours.
After dropping devices equipped with Samsung’s foldable panel 26 times from waist height at various angles, the organization that Samsung Display engaged for the testing found “no problems with the product during external activities by rotating the product at a speed that would apply up to 10.5 times the force of gravity,” or the acceleration tests that the military does on components for planes and choppers.
Besides the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Samsung put the first MIL-STD 810G-certified foldable display with plastic substrate in its recently demonstrated Flex In-N-Out prototype device that made a cameo during the CES expo last month. In any case, the points is that its pliable phone displays have gone a long way since the first Fold screen debacle that let debris get in the hinge and under the panel.
Samsung is now facing a stiff competition in the foldable phone realm form basically all major Chinese makers and it will have to quickly step up its game in a market that it singlehandedly popularized. As for the foldable iPhone, Apple’s need for it seem rather far off and it has plenty of time to wait and see where the wind blow in terms of price and durability of foldable displays.
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